This blog post was written in conjunction with the NextDrop team
Bangalore’s water crisis
Bangalore, home to India’s Silicon Valley and capital of the state of Karnataka, is facing a severe water crisis. The city’s population has increased dramatically in the last few years and now stands at nearly 9 million. Bangalore’s water demand is mainly met by the Cauvery River which supplies about 910 million litres of water per day (MLD) through a complex piped network. As demand has far outstripped supply, water is rationed. Most parts of the city receive water once in two days thought the piped network.
The supply of water is controlled by valvemen who manually operate valves by turning a valvekey. Water supply depends on whether valvemen adhere to the schedule prepared by the engineering staff and also on electricity supply as water is often pumped from pumping stations. There are approximately 8,000 operating valves and 500+ valvemen across the city.
The resident’s experience
Valvemen do not always adhere to the schedule. This introduces variability, sometimes as much as nine hours, in the time of water supply. Such variability heavily impacts the lives of Bangalore’s residents, especially of those women who make their living through hourly or daily wages. Further, based on past experience, residents do not believe that they have a voice.
The water board’s view
The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is the premier governmental agency responsible for water supply and sewage disposal. As is the case with most utilities in the developing world, the BWSSB has been operating in an information-deficient environment. Monitoring the performance of valvemen, who manually operate the valves, is near impossible when there is no feedback. Is there an affordable solution that can do the job?
NextDrop – Using mobile to transform valvemen into human sensors
In 2010, NextDrop started implementing a solution in the twin towns of Hubli-Dharwad that provided water supply alerts to residents. The source of this information was the valvemen themselves who called into an IVR system with information on when a particular valve was turned on or off. This information was encoded into an SMS by NextDrop’s backend and sent to only those customers who received water from that particular valve. With the support of the BWSSB and GSMA Mobile for Development Utilities funding, this system was deployed across 40% of Bangalore.
More recently, the system was extended from its original form that supply information to residents to one that aggregated, analysed and presented information to BWSSB to enable data-driven decisions.
From an IVR solution to a ValveKey App – a solution to valvemen reporting challenges
Today, the majority of valvemen report by calling into an IVR system to indicate when a specific vale is open or closed. While this is simple enough, valvemen sometimes forget to report, or report late. All of these situations compromise the timeliness of water supply information. Valvemen also require training to use the IVR, which constrains the ability of NextDrop to rapidly scale up its deployment. Was there a solution that simplified the reporting process, improved the accuracy of data and its timeliness?
NextDrop designed a simple mobile app for Android that requires only a magnetic sensor, an accelerometer, GPS and data connectivity. Once the phone is mounted on the valvekey, the app detects the location (to determine the valveID), the direction of rotation (clockwise rotation means a valve is being closed) and the number of turns (which determines how much water is being released and whether a valve is being fully closed). And voila! More accurate and timely information is available to the residents and BWSSB with a simple key press.
Is this the be-all, end-all solution?
Clearly, the ValveKey app has significant advantages over the IVR. Not only does it improve the fidelity of data, it also simplifies and speeds up reporting. Finally, it has the potential to dramatically speed up deployment.
However, there are potential issues that can compromise operations. One reason smartphones are aspirational is that they enable media consumption. Heavy media consumption drains the battery rapidly. Moreover, it exhausts the data bandwidth that should be used to upload information. If the valvemen does not fully charge the phone before beginning his rounds, he will probably be able to upload data for only part of the day. Similarly, if he runs out of bandwidth, he will incur extra data charges. If he has a prepaid plan, he will often run out of credit and not be able to upload data at all.
This throws up a number of interesting questions:
1. Who should pay for the smartphone? For the data plan? Should it be prepaid or post-paid?
2. Can a portion of the data bandwidth be reserved for the ValveKey app?
3. What incentives should be provided to the valvemen to ensure timely reports?
4. Should the smartphone be fully capable or should its functionality be limited to ensure compliance?
5. Should valvemen be required to turn in the smartphone before they go home so it is charged overnight?
We’d love to hear from you on these and any other questions you can think of. To get in touch, email us at m4dutilities@gsma.com